One of the Fathers of Confederation, Tilley was first a pharmacist who became involved in the New Brunswick temperance movement after the brutal murder of a local woman by her drunken husband: “There lay the mother withering in her blood, her little children crying around her, and the husband and father under arrest for murder, and rum the cause of it all.” In 1847 Tilley joined the executive council of the local Sons of Temperance branch, leading to his entry into municipal, then provincial, politics. In 1855 he advocated for "the arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and the incarceration of intoxicated people until they revealed their source supply” with his controversial Prohibition Bill. When it came into effect in 1856, "he was burned in effigy, his house was attacked." Tilley went on to become the Premier of New Brunswick and is best known as the Father of Confederation.
Source: C. M. Wallace (1990). Tilley, Sir Samuel Leonard. Dict. of Canadian Biography. University of Toronto
| Drugs: | Alcohol |
|---|---|
| Regions: | Canada |
| Topics: | Prohibition |
